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Monday, 21 April 2014

UnFinished Objects

My study-o has been in drastic need of a sort-out for a while now. There are more UFOs in there than in area 51. Poor old scrap vomit has been sitting in there for almost 3 whole years (more chronic heartburn than projectile vomit). Then there's the quilt my sister commissioned for my nephew around 6 months ago. And a baby quilt top, finished but in need of backing and binding. Before starting anything new, I resolved to embark on a Spring quiltathon to get these three finished, buoyed on by the arrival on the weekend of a newborn niece, for whom the baby quilt top is destined, and the necessity of first finishing the big boy bed quilt for her big brother.

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scrap vomit

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baby quilt top

So first up, the big boy bed quilt. This one was all but finished, but I'd been procrastinating over binding choices. Polka dots, my go-to binding choice, had been ruled out, so what to do? Solids, stripes, checks or patterns? I'm not good when faced with too much choice. But then I stumbled upon this lovely denim-coloured narrow stripe fabric by Makower over at the Village Haberdashery, and bought a metre with a view to cutting it on the bias for a candy-stripe effect.

pinstripe binding fabric

It really is an ideal fabric choice for binding a child's quilt as it's super soft - much more so than usual with quilting cottons. Annie has it in 6 different colourways, so I might just have to add a few more to my stash (especially coveting the lime green and red pinstripes).

I cut 2 1/4" binding strips as I find 2 1/2" just a bit too wide usually, cutting on the bias. Having machined the binding in place to the right side, I spent a few hours later that evening handstitching the binding to the reverse of the quilt whilst watching some recorded episodes of the Great British Sewing Bee with my eldest girl. Binding and mother-daughter sewing-bee viewing was a great bit of distraction while waiting for my husband to return from the hospital with my son, who needed his chin gluing back together after an argument involving a bike, a boy, and a subway wall.

Great British Sewing Bee bindathon

By 4am, I had a fully repaired boy, a finished quilt binding, and an urgent appointment with my duvet. All finished just in time to drive up to visit my sister and her partner in London the next day and meet my lovely new niece! Luckily she's not quite old enough to realise her aunt has been too remiss to finish her new baby quilt yet.

Robot softie stowed away in the package and elicited a very excited 'wow' from my nephew.

9 comments:

Well done, just had a conversation with my other half about how I just can't finish something. I seem to find a hundred other things that are much more important before I sit down and make something. Well done for pushing through. It looks fab, esp robot!

Oooo... delightful quilt for a little boy! And oooo, I still have yet to start my first quilt for my little-ish boy. I have had the fabrics for an age. Maybe this loveliness should be the encouragement I need!

A mix of prints with a bit of gingham and solids in blues, reds and whites. Now that does sound rather co-ordinated though I hope not! I even have a brushed cotton sheet for the backing... absolutely no excuse.

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